Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Milt On Clampett part 1

Milt Gray is an animator, director and cartoon historian. He has interviewed countless golden age animators and artists and was a personal friend of Bob Clampett. I first met Bob I think at Milt's. Milt has spent thousands of hours studying animation frame by frame from classic cartoons and is quite an articulate writer on the subject of what makes cartoons tick.

My Take on Bob Clampett - by Milton Gray

I have several observations on Bob Clampett that I would like to share, particularly at this time as there seems to still be in some people’s minds an image of Bob as a ridiculous or grossly irresponsible person, an image largely invented and perpetuated by a very envious Chuck Jones (and subsequently Stan Freberg).

Clampett Was A Living Cartoon Character

Bob Clampett did have a very exuberant and mischievous personality, and as a result people reacted rather strongly to him -- they either loved his crazy antics or disdained him as undignified. But it is important to know that there was no meanness in Bob’s character (despite some terrible -- and untrue -- stories that have circulated about him). What was true is that Bob virtually always made the other person feel “included” (rather than ridiculed) in whatever horseplay or practical jokes were going on. And in addition, the Bob I knew was frequently very cordial and generous to whoever came to him with a question or a request. In an age when there are so many mean people everywhere, there is a common tendency to look for ulterior motives when someone kind or positive comes along. Bob exuded the simple joy of being alive, which some people are too cynical to appreciate.

His Characters Were Sides Of Him

These qualities of Bob’s personality permeated his cartoon characters. Although Bob’s version of Porky Pig (and later Beany and Cecil) was always a very sincere and energetic, if somewhat naive, young person, most of Bob’s other characters ranged from eagerly mischievous (like the Marx Brothers) to outright hysterical.

(By contrast, for me Chuck Jones’s Bugs Bunny tended to be inactive and overconfident to the point of extreme smugness, while Jones’s Daffy became greedy to the point of premeditated villainy. I far prefer Clampett’s hysterical Daffy and prankster Bugs -- they are so much more passionate and energetic.)

Clampett Daffy above, Jones' below(I forget where these came from, tell me and I will link to you)

Clampett Bugs above, Jones below

Jones and a few others liked to attack Clampett in later years for allegedly taking too much credit for the success of the Warner cartoons. But I believe that Clampett does deserve a lot of the credit, and here are the reasons as I see them:

From the first day that Clampett came to work at the Harman-Ising/Schlesinger/Warner cartoon studio (in 1931), he was brimming with ideas for cartoons, which made him very different from practically everyone else at the studio then -- serious minded people who had scarcely thought about funny characters or imaginative gag situations before landing their first studio job. This unique characteristic of Bob’s originated in his inquisitive personality, all the way back to his early childhood.

50 comments:

He didn't state it publicly, but Jones was jealous of Clampett, plain and simple. He would, sometimes, say it privately, to people like Mike Peters and on one occasion, me.

I remember talking to him about the early days, asking if it was true about Schelsinger trying to persuade him and the others to be more like Tex and Clampett. He didn't get angry, but he did remind me that Schelsinger was an idiot.

He also didn't enjoy being told to be like someone he couldn't understand. He never knocked Tex, just said that he could never duplicate what Tex did. In his book he wrote, "others tried and fell short" and no one really knows this, but he, in fact, was thinking of Clampett.

Clampett was a huge influence on the industry, yet in Chuck's book, the camera man, the front secretary, and the cartoon studio janitor all get more mention than Bob did. It was almost as though he wasn't there.

-'Bob exuded the simple joy of being alive, which some people are too cynical to appreciate.'

Contact with cynical people, the kind of people who don't seem to believe that innocence and joy is possible 'any more', makes me feel yet more strongly that this simple joy what we should all aspire to. It is quite rare but quite real.

Clampett got the best from the main Warner characters. It is as simple as that. Porky, Daffy and Bugs had their top moments under the direction of Clampett. This statement is extremely easy to make but one hardly realize how extremely remarkable an achievement it is for a director.Yes, I might be biased, but, as there is no such thing as objectivity, I don´t give a damn!

'Contact with cynical people, the kind of people who don't seem to believe that innocence and joy is possible 'any more', makes me feel yet more strongly that this simple joy what we should all aspire to. It is quite rare but quite real.'

Well said.

And not to get to misty eyed... but after being exposed to Bob Clampett's work I've come to realize that the best art and entertainment comes from this simple joy. With his work I don't feel like I'm being preached to and I don't feel like I have to analyze the 'subtext'. They look, and move, and sound great. For 7 minutes you have a fun time, and you feel energetic and playful afterwards.

booo tooons: Ya know that's real a shame Jones was jealous of Clampett. Jones had talent coming out the arse hole. Hell, he was a better draftsman then Clampett was. All Jones really had to do was loosen up. His problem was, especially in the 1950's on, his dependence om formula. He made too many rules for character motivations and stories. As a result, he just kept repeating himself over and over again. Anyway I digress, I can't wait for part two Milt !

Thanks John, that was really interesting. I enjoy both Clampett and Jones work, but lately I've been loving just about everything pre-1950's. As an animator, I've always had to work hard to improve my draugtsmanship, and it's difficult to do that when so much of animation now (well, what's left of 2D anyway)seems to rely more on the drawing than actually doing something fun or saying something with it. I hope to change that for the future when it comes to my own work. Anyway, your blog is terrific and I enjoy visiting. Thanks for your insightful commentary.

Milt /John. I'm glad to see you working to bring Bob Clampett's achievements to the forefront of animation dialog on the net. I knew Bob personally and in fact owe my career to him which he kick started by inviting me to Hollywood to check out the animation business after some correspondence we had had to that point. When I got to L.A. he gave me a list of people to contact at the various studio's and in fact had called then in advance so they were expecting to hear from me. Extremely generous and as a result of that visit I was on my way professionally. From what I knew of him he was unfailingly, polite, helpful, generous, enthusiastic - loved the animation business, and I believe adhered to some pretty basic (in my opinion) principles in life. Like, for example, as in my case, I got him up to lecture at a college in Canada, and he in return, got me to L.A. He didn't have to do that. He was in my opinion, being a decent guy, doing what he could to give a young want to be a boost. "Coal Black" is certainly one of the greatest if not the greatest (depending on taste) cartoons ever made. It never once has failed, in my many viewings of it, to reach out and grab me like few things can. It has a energy that transcends itself and literally, at least to me, permeates and spills out of every frame.. Clampett's direction, Scribner's animation, hard to beat. I've often pondered how Bob became the mystery man of animation but as has been noted, the Blue Ribbon cartoons, television only broadcasting post 1948 Warner's cartoons and the general derision of his peers didn't help matters. I've often thought, that to really understand the impact of what he did, when he did it and just how far he pushed the boundary's a screening of his cartoons alongside those that his contemporaries were doing in the same time frame would be in order - you could then say loud and clear - "this is what the man was doing and what makes him so great" . People like yourselves don't need that, I don't need that but I think audiences in general do. I watched a Clampett retrospective during Ottawa 06 and was struck when afterward a comment was made along the lines of " What does John see in this stuff". Everyone has there favorites and certainly there's no accounting for taste. I could certainly quibble about frame composition, perspective in some shots etc, but for sheer maniac energy and adherence to what, at least I believe, a cartoon should be it's hard to beat Bob Clampett in his prime

Greetings, John!My name is Roberto Pereira. I'm a 43th years-old journalist from Sao Paulo, Brazil.I would like to expose your work in my city.Please contact me for more details: robertopereira1964@uol.com.br

Bob Clampett definitely played a big part in giving the WB studio the energy and wit that made it the timeless and phenominal zeitgeist of an animation studio that it became.However, IMO, I do feel Jones was right in leaving Clampett off of Bugs' Wall of Fathers. Although, he should have left Friz Freleng off there too. I say this because Clampett had been segregated to a seperate building and Friz was all the way over at the MGM studio during those gestation years of Bugs' development in 1938-40. What Jones should have done instead (just for the purposes of accuracy) is put Clampett and Friz on a seperate wall for Bugs' Stepfathers - inthat those two didn't help create Bugs but they certainly did step in after his birth and helped raise the Bunny. Their guidance made very significant contributions to Bugs' final personality, noone can deny that.

Also, I agree 100% with Milt when he says that the characters in Clampett's cartoons reflect aspects of him. The ultimate example of that is Tweety of course. Well said, Milt. I can't wait to read more.

John, do you know who did the great colour illustration that graces the museum programme at the top of your post? I'm inclined to guess someone like Dan Haskett from the expressive, appealing poses, but if you know who it was, I'd sure love to know. Thanks!

What a great read! Thanks Milt and John. Can't wait for the next part.

I really enjoy the Daffy comparison too. Clampett's Daffy was so expressive! There are some great eye shapes going on too, especially on the bottom left. The animator really got a funny caricature down.

"who did the great colour illustration that graces the museum programme at the top of your post?"

Hey Pete!

That drawing was done by none other than John himself, with help from Lynne Naylor. First time I saw it was in Wild Cartoon Kingdom #1 when they told us all the story of Nick stealing Ren and Stimpy from John.

Anyway, I had a thought for a reply to a very recent comment by David Germain: Regarding whether Clampett should be included in Bugs' "Wall of Fathers", Clampett wrote the original story for Ben Hardaway's "Porky's Hare Hunt", which most people agree was the original germ of the character of Bugs. Hardaway changed the appearance and personality of "the rabbit" from Clampett's storyboard to something more different from the Bugs that we would recognize today. But Clampett definitely had a hand, along with others, in the original concept of Bugs.

As for Clampett being "segregated to a separate building" during the initial evolution of Bugs, this separate building was still on the same Warner studio lot as the rest of the cartoon studio, and only a short walk away. Bob had to go over to the main studio building frequently, almost daily, to visit Carl Stalling and Treg Brown, the ink and paint department and post production. So he could, and often did, visit other people in the main building during this time.

Although one of the interviewers makes a point to disregard it --here, in his own words, without stressing it very much, Clampett makes a good case that he was rightfully Bugs' father-iest father. I take him at his word.

Thanks for that info, Trevor. Funnily enough, it never even occurred to me that it might be John's art when I asked about it, as it doesn't strike me as being typical of the rascal's style. I thought maybe Haskett because of the "Freddy Moore" roundness in the visual appeal. So I'm guessing now that John pencilled it and Lynne painted it?

Clampett was a genius-level gag man with a truly wild visual imagination. Any still from his best cartoons would be as weird and inspiring as the best of the modern "lowbrow" artists. And he could really tell a story with the gags. he's the best of the Loony Tunes directors as far as I'm concerned.

But there is something very specific that Jones did really well. It has to do with showing a whole series of little thoughts that read as abstract thinking, instead of one big emotional reaction, as the previous directors had done. I also think Maurice Noble was the best layout/background man the business ever saw.

Personally, Jones was humorless, and had a really annoying combination of arrogance and insecurity that made him go around quoting himself, and making up slanderous lies about anyone he considered a threat. But he also added something to the cartoon vocabulary.

Thanks so much for posting these! I love Clampett and these tidbits are always fun! I really appreciate all the work you, milt, an barrier have put in to making the work and contributions of clampett more accessibe!

Clampett wrote the original story for Ben Hardaway's "Porky's Hare Hunt", which most people agree was the original germ of the character of Bugs. Hardaway changed the appearance and personality of "the rabbit" from Clampett's storyboard to something more different from the Bugs that we would recognize today.

From accounts that I've read and heard in various interviews and such, Hardaway got the story of Porky's Hare Hunt directly from Tex's cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt by, as Ben put it, "putting a rabbit suit on that duck" and that Bob merely contributed a few gags. Are you now saying that it was Clampett who redid the first Daffy cartoon with a rabbit? Hmmm. That's a new wrinkle. Hopefully that will be answered in part II or III (or however many parts this essay has).

"...So, I looked in my desk drawer, and among my other story sketches, I found this big pile of gags that we didn't use in Porky's Duck Hunt. Now, the second Daffy Duck hunt cartoon was going over big in the theaters, so I went to Leon and I said, "I've got all these great hunting gags left over from the first duck-hunt picture. I could organize them, put in a little new material and have you a story in just a few days." Leon said, "I don't want to give Warners another duck-hunt picture so soon." I said, "What do you object to, another hunting picture?" He said, "No, I just don't want another duck hunt." I said, "Maybe I'll get an idea."

This was on a Friday afternoon. So I took these sketches with me, and driving home I mulled over what else I could do with these gags. Should I switch it into a quail hunt? Or a fox hunt? Or a . . .? And then, recalling some of my 1931 "wabbit" and hunter gags. . . I settled on making him a rabbit.

After dinner, I began putting the duck sketches on my light board, intending to just draw the rabbit doing the duck's actions and gags. But I found that the rabbit simply refused to do the same things that Daffy did. It just didn't feel right. And as my work progressed into the early morning hours the rabbit took on a personality of his own. I had found the character I was looking for. This was the birth of Bugs Bunny.

I worked on the sketches all that weekend, showed them to my folks for their reaction, and delivered them to Leon Monday morning, He chuckled through it, thought it was pretty funny stuff, and assigned it to the Ben Hardaway-Cal Dalton unit to film...."

1. Since Porky's Duck Hunt was a Tex Avery directed cartoon, wouldn't Tex have held on to any storyboard panels? Tex was in charge of that entire producton while Clampett was just one of the animators.

2. Even if Clampett had managed to get these storyboard panels and assembled them into a whole new story with a rabbit replacing Daffy and Leon liked it so much, why didn't Clampett direct it? He was in charge of his own unit by the time. Why did Leon automatically assign it to Hardaway and Dalton?

Those are not "holes" in Clampett's story. They are your second guesses. You may as well imply that the story is false because you know for a fact that people don't like to work on weekends. You will need to explain better why Clampett's version should be second guessed.

Clampett's entire career vouches for him, in a way that nobody else at Warner's could. Not when we are discussing the creation of the rabbit.

Is there something that so impresses you about the work of Hardaway and Dalton that causes you to put more faith in Ben's offhand remark than in Clampett's much clearer and morer probable recollection of events?

You may as well imply that the story is false because you know for a fact that people don't like to work on weekends.

Okay, you're going to have to explain how that oxymoronic statement has to do with anything.

Is there something that so impresses you about the work of Hardaway and Dalton that causes you to put more faith in Ben's offhand remark than in Clampett's much clearer and morer probable recollection of events?

This has nothing to do with who made the better cartoons. With that nice little logic system you've set up for yourself, if Jimmy Page told you that he just pistol-whipped Santa Claus on the moon you'd believe him simply because he wrote Stairway to Heaven. Sure, Clampett was a better director than Hardaway and Dalton put together but that doesn't mean we should all throw logic and reason out the window. Many parts of Clampett's story do not make sense simply because......... they do not make sense regardless of what masterpieces he created.

Many parts of Clampett's story do not make sense simply because......... they do not make sense regardless of what masterpieces he created.

You have missed the logic, but it's there.

Can you prove there were no drawings in Clampett's desk and that he would have had to get them from Tex?

Can you establish taht a person of Clampett's caliber could not have put together some boards in a long weekend?

Clampett didn't come up with the rabbit as the Next Big Thing, he did it to help Leon meet a deadline.

He didn't direct it because he was doing Porky's and that was going well and that is how the boss wanted it.

Your "holes" are just flawed conjecture, just like my example. My example has nothing to do with Jimmy Page on the moon, except to say that your stated "holes" may as well be Jimmy Page on the moon. If you can acknowlege the above, perhaps we can continue.

When I say that Clampett's carreer vouches for him, I mean that in the same sense that the fossil record vouches for evolution. I actually mean some analytical things I am too lazy to support at the moment. It might take hours to prepare that post. I'm not simply saying that I like his cartoons better, so I believe him, but I am saying he has less to lie about than anybody else and both the film record and history make that clear.

We don't have to throw out logic or reason to accept Clampett's story. We just have to accept it. His legend provides no real cause for doubt. He is not an easily impeached witness. If you would like to impeach him, you need something better than conjecture about where the drawings were.

If we are gentlemen and we assume that nobody has ever lied about any claims on the rabbit, Clampett still filed the earliest claim.

He is not saying that he brought Bugs fully formed into the world, but if his story is accurate, the germ for Bugs was his, as much or more by incident as by intent.

I believe the film record supports this assertion.

Bugs was not fully formed with mannerisms, schtick, and look until Tex had his turn. Going strictly by what appears on film and in the credits you would have to call Tex bugs's real daddy. Things at the studio were a little looser. I happen to think Clampett had involvement because the rabbit we have all come to love has primarily those two all over it, in my opinion. Those two liked each other, would've discussed projects regularly, and I don't think Clampett was far very away from WILD HARE.

Bugs became a huge hit when Clampett started doing them. Maybe that's because he knew more or less what he wanted from the rabbit all along.

He didn't direct it because he was doing Porky's and that was going well and that is how the boss wanted it.

However, Porky's Hare Hunt was a black & white Porky cartoon which is what Clampett's unit was only assigned to do. He could have directed it. Why would Leon have automatically assigned it to Hardaway and Dalton if he liked the way Clampett did it? That's the HUUUUUGE hole that has not been filled up.

He could have said that Hardaway was desperate for a story and so he generously lent his little storyboard to him. That would have corrosponded well with Hardaway's claim of merely putting a rabbit suit on Daffy. But, he said "[Leon] chuckled through it, thought it was pretty funny stuff, and assigned it to the Ben Hardaway-Cal Dalton unit to film...." which makes no sense at all.

The story credit on Porky's Hare Hunt is credited to Howard Baldwin. If we somehow knew his exact contributions to this cartoon it might put this all to bed once and for all.

Why would Leon have automatically assigned it to Hardaway and Dalton if he liked the way Clampett did it? That's the HUUUUUGE hole that has not been filled up.

It's still not a hole. If that's how it was, that's just how it was. Leon could do what he wanted. On whose authority do you opine that he didn't or wouldn't do exactly that? It was that unit that he wanted help for. Why are you surprised that when he got it, he gave it to them?

I think your conclusions are ultimately still too speculative and arbitrary. I find nothing implausible about the story as it reads. That could be due to my lack of knowlege but it doesn't sound like that yet.

In the end it's trivia. In my mind what is much more significant than who first said or thought rabbit or saw a rabbit is who brought the rabbit to his peak.

It's nice to hear that Clampett was a nice guy who enjoyed life. I wish I could have met the guy, but I was born almost exactly eight years after he died.

Thank you Mr.Gray, along with Mr.Barrier, for hunting down this kind of information and accurately elaborating things like this in a clear manner. So far, your reviews on cartoons, movies and people are the ones I read first and trust the most.

Great article,Bob Clampett sounds like he was a great guy who would have been a lot of laughs to be around.The world needs more folks like him and less angry jerks.The sad by-product of living in these times is that it is hard for nice people not to become cynical when you are surrounded by so many self centered people who use kindness as a device to manipulate others.

I have to agree that I never cared much for Chuck's Bugs and Daffy either.even as a kid I noticed the change in their personalitys and didnt like it.Bugs became too aloof and cocky,but Daffy seemed to suffer the most,he became an outright criminal and such a jerk at times that it was annoying watch.